I always talk about root buyer psychology whenever Black Friday is around…
For instance, they see your offer and buy immediately.
Here’s a strawman version of it:
We focused on the left side of this image — the zone of heavy discounts — where you compete solely on price.
A lot of people feel queasy about heavy discounting.
Which is why we talked about the strategic side of discounting: Customer Creation
Tldr; discounting (usually thought of as a negative) can be used as a strategic tool to convert longtime fence-sitters into customers, who are then likely to go on to buy more stuff from you later (always thought of as a positive).
But there’s an elephant in the room:
Heavy discounting only works if you sell digital products.
There’s 95%+ margin in digital products, so however heavy you go with your discounting, you’re always going to make a profit of some kind.
But what happens if you have a service component to your offer?
- Coaching
- Services
- Cohorts
- DWY work
If this is your business model, it rarely makes sense to discount.
Regardless of the profit, delivery itself doesn’t scale.
(Even if you could sell 100X what you normally do, there’s no way you’d be able to fulfil on it.)
So it’s a non-starter.
So What Do I Do?
If you have a service component, I would forget discounting altogether.
As we talked about yesterday, there’s just no point making some kind of “me too” 10% discount offer — nobody will take the slightest bit of notice.
(Remember, they couldn’t care less about your business model… they’re just looking at the % discount amount.)
You can’t compete on price.
But you can compete on value.
Don’t take this lightly.
Remember, you’re up against the siren call of heavy discounts, so you’ve got to construct an offer that makes people truly sit up and take notice.
There are three ways I think about this:
- Terms
- Access
- Volume (bonuses)
Below are some ideas for you…
Terms
AKA what are all the conditions and guarantees you can play around with to make the offer more favourable:
- Lifetime guarantee (6 months —> lifetime)
- Lifetime/extended access (for a limited time product)
- Extended payment plan (3 months —> 12 months)
- Lifetime 10% off any other products
Access
AKA how much 1-to-1 time do people get:
- Welcome call with you
- 8 weeks of Q&A calls
- Extra written feedback / critiques
- Private messaging access
Volume
AKA extra stuff that they get:
- Digital products you’ve made
- Extra 1-to-1 calls
- Access to tools
- Books in the mail (great for authors)
There’s quite a lot there, right?
With a bit of creativity, there’s a LOT you can do here.
Here’s where to start:
Go back through your various buyer or “why didn’t you buy?” surveys and look for doubts, hesitations, objections.
(Easiest way to do this is to upload your docs to ChatGPT.)
Try to match up the big patters with offer angles from the above list. Look for a combination of angles that directly meet people’s biggest objections.
With a bit of creativity, I’m sure you can put together a once-in-a-lifetime type deal worthy of a seat at any Black Friday table.
But wait… there’s more.
See, however awesome a “value add” deal you construct for Black Friday, there’s still no getting away from the fact that discounts are what people are looking for…
And digital products are the easiest things to discount.
So, in my humble opinion, this is a very good reason to build a suite of digital products to accompany your main offer.
Take a look at my stuff at https://ollyrichards.co/my-courses/ for example.
These are very valuable products that I’ve been quietly building in the background for the last couple of years, all highly relevant to what I teach.
I think of them as “supporting acts” in my overall ecosystem.
I only make 5-10% of my revenue from these workshops, so they’re not big money-spinners compared to my main coaching programmes (Elevate and my private mentorship work.)
However, these products give me a LOT of options when it comes to making offers of different kinds — bundles, upsells, freebies, whatever needs dictate.
If you sell coaching or high-ticket stuff, I think it’s smart to develop a product ecosystem like this yourself. Not least because, come Black Friday, you’ve now got something you can discount to the moon and make seriously compelling.
(And, of course, create a whole bunch of new customers in the meantime.)
Anyway…
That’s what I got for you today.
I’ve been in Abu Dhabi this last week, and I gotta say, I’m impressed.
I’m already familiar with this part of the world from my years spend living in Qatar back in the early days of StoryLearning.
But this is next-level.
It’s almost like Japan in the level of cleanliness and service, although I don’t doubt there’s a more exploitative side to it all. (Look up the human cost of building the Qatari World Cup if you don’t know what I mean.)
Regardless, I’ve been enjoying cruising around in driverless robo-taxis. (Talk about seeing the future unfold in front of you! Stories on my IG.)
The sea is ridiculously warm.
The food is great.
The construction is f***ing next-level. Like nothing you’ve ever seen.
And it’s nice to be somewhere hot without the usual jet lag associated with Asia.
But most of all, it’s good to detach from work a little bit.
This year has been a bit crazy.
I’ve built an entirely new arm to the business in the last 6 months, which has been really successful.
(That’s partly why the emails have been less frequent.)
But I haven’t really written much about it yet.
That’s all coming.
It’s been nice to be busy again, after all this “4 days a month” malarkey that’s been the soundtrack to my life in the last few years.
I still think that good quality work is central to a happy life.
But when you work harder, you’ve definitely got to remember to take time off.
Something for me to remember moving forward.
Namaste,
Olly
